This special issue is developed from the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL 2007) held in Birmingham, UK, in December 2007. The IDEAL conference covers active and emerging topics in data analysis, adaptive learning algorithms and related subjects in a wide range of applications from data mining, bio-/neuro-informatics to agent systems and nancial engineering.

The IDEAL 2007 conference proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS-4881) included 110 papers selected from 270 submissions after peer-review. A number of published papers were subsequently selected and their authors were invited to extend their papers substantially for this special issue, along with other two special issues in other journals. Extended papers have undergone a further review process. Three of them passed the stringent criteria for a JMMA paper and have been included in this special issue. They provide a small sample of the broad topics covered by the IDEAL conference.